


everything with wings is restless

by oddishly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:38:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddishly/pseuds/oddishly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The upsides of working a travelling double act with your brother bear a remarkably close resemblance to the downsides. Namely: you travel around the country with your brother (plus one white rabbit) in a big-ass black caravan, and you (sometimes) get paid for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything with wings is restless

**Author's Note:**

> An AU of [The Illusionist](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775489/), written for [spn-cinema](http://spn-cinema.livejournal.com/). ordinaryink is my partner in crime; her art post is [here](http://ordinaryink.livejournal.com/37986.html) and you should go and shower praise on her immediately :')

  


It’s a job like any other. Get in, get out, get the snarky t-shirt. Try not to piss anyone off in the process and ignore your brother when he tries to stop you eating your body weight in cholesterol. Repeat.

“You’re no fun, Sammy,” Dean tells him, and takes another bite of his burger.

Sam makes a face. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says, then, “there’s a circus in town next week, I saw a poster.”

Dean nods. “So we’ll stick around. I wanna spend more time with these fries, anyhow, pass the ketchup. What’s a circus doing in a place this size?”

“Dunno. I think it’s more like a – glorified fair or something, but we might as well stay.”

Dean’s trying to decide if the ketchup is going to taste as funky as it smells. Probably. He squirts it all over his fries anyway. “You want some?” He pushes the plate towards Sam encouragingly, readying a line about how just because Sam forgot to stop growing doesn’t mean he gets to forget to eat as well, but Sam shakes his head. “You’re missing out, y’know.”

“Not hungry. Hey, Dean – the waitress has been staring at you since we walked in, haven’t you noticed yet?”

“You learn to ignore it when you’re as attractive as I am,” Dean tells him but turns around, a ready _hi, sugar_ look on his face. The girl isn’t looking at him; she’s reading a magazine under the counter, and when Dean turns back to the table, everything but the ketchup has vanished from the top of it. “Hey!”

Sam shrugs, smirking a bit. Dean thinks about crying foul, because only a cheat like Sam would use Dean’s own tricks against him, but Dean’s in a benevolent mood right now. He leans across the table and plucks a fry out of Sam’s ear then eats it whole, just to annoy him.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Never gets old for you, does it?” he says. Dean grins at him and licks his fingers one by one.

  


The upsides of working a travelling double act with your brother bear a remarkably close resemblance to the downsides. Namely: you travel around the country with your brother (plus one white rabbit) in a big-ass black caravan, and you (sometimes) get paid for it.

It’s raining, just like it’s been raining for the last week and a half, and they haven’t been able to fix the leak above the couch since Sam put a broomstick through the ceiling three months ago. Dean likes to tell Sam that that’s what you get for caring about the relative cleanliness of your caravan – and for the record, when the only one of the two of them to ever bring chicks back is Dean, he has no clue why Sam gives a shit about a couple spiders or whatever – when you don’t need to.

“You gotta empty the saucepan, Sam,” he says, throwing it over his shoulder toward the kitchenette. Sam’s been busy cooking up some kind of soup all morning, chopping enough onions that at one point Dean had to go cower outside in the rain to escape the fumes. It doesn’t smell so bad now, though: just the right amount of spicy to make your nose twitch; kind of sweet at the same time. Parsnip, Sam hasn’t made that in a while. Dean fucking _loves_ parsnip soup.

“You do it,” says Sam. “Shit, we’re out of nutmeg.”

“I cannot believe we’re related,” Dean says, and narrows his eyes at Sam. “Maybe you were switched at birth.” He gets up to help look for more nutmeg anyway.

“It would explain why I’m so much more intelligent and better looking than you,” Sam agrees. “Go empty the saucepan before the rabbit decides to take a swim in it.”

There’s a frog right outside the door. Dean crouches down to look at it, thinking about picking it up, then jumps half out of his skin when it launches itself into a puddle a couple of feet away.

“All right?” Sam asks, raising his eyebrows at Dean.

“There was a frog,” Dean tells him, flapping a hand in the frog’s direction. “It surprised me.”

“It was definitely more scared of you, Dean.”

“Ha fucking ha.” Dean pulls the door closed and returns the saucepan to the leaky spot.

“Anyway,” says Sam. When Dean looks at him, he’s wearing the creased smile that always makes Dean want to tell him off for eating the cake batter again. “You’re wrong.”

“What am I wrong about, Sammy?”

“In your list of upsides and downsides,” says Sam, “you forgot to mention that this is the only job in the world where people know they’re being hustled and still pay us for the privilege.”

“Ah,” Dean says, “knew I left something out.”

  


They stick around long enough to establish that it is indeed a glorified fair and not a circus that’s come to town, and then Dean sneaks into the show one night and tells Sam the following morning that what it actually amounts to is a glee club on stilts, so they pack up the caravan and drive down for a while.

“Yes,” Sam sighs the first morning they wake up to filmy sunshine on the window.

“Fucking finally, right?”

They drive down some more, because just because it’s sunny doesn’t mean people want to give Dean and his brother a job. Dean thinks that that demonstrates some considerable errors of judgment on everyone else’s part, so it’s probably a good thing he and Sam haven’t gotten tied into working for them.

“Yeah,” says Sam, and tries to make Dean eat the last of the soup.

Three hundred miles later, Dean pulls over. “I’m sick of driving down.”

“So let’s stop here,” says Sam. He jabs Dean with his elbow. “Unless you’d feel differently about _me_ driving down.”

“Nope,” says Dean. “Maybe next time.”

He wakes up while it’s still dark, breath wrenching out of his body, to an old nightmare. Sam’s still asleep, curled all crooked on the couch because it’s six inches too short for him but still better than the bunks.

Dean pulls himself out of the bunk and crosses to the couch. Sam is almost entirely buried under blankets, his forearm covering the half of his face not pressed into the cushions. Dean runs his finger over the back of his hand to watch his fingers twitch, then he walks backwards to his bunk to get the duvet, and arranges it around himself at the foot of the couch. He leans his head against Sam’s leg until it’s light enough to make himself breakfast.

“Do you think we’ll get a show here?” Sam asks him in the morning, pushing himself up the couch to take the coffee Dean’s holding for him. He sips it and grins at Dean.

“If you ever make it out of bed,” Dean says, but he doesn’t really mind.

They get a show. An outdoor show, on a rickety stage in the park that still has posters up for whatever the fuck act they’re replacing – clowns, by the look of it. Well, unless those white things are supposed to be ghosts or some shit, Dean can’t tell, maybe the clowns had aspirations to illusion – Dean chuckles to himself; _ghosts_ , for fuck’s sake – but he rips it all down anyway.

Their first night (and okay, they only got two nights but you don’t see Dean complaining) they start getting ready an hour before they need to. “That’s a good thing,” says Sam. “As you’re evidently out of practice dressing yourself.”

“It’s a bow tie, Sammy, no one knows how to tie a fucking bow tie.”

“C’mere.” Sam tugs Dean’s tie undone and starts over, telling him to lift his head and stand still. Now lift his chin, okay, relax. “There you go, all right?”

Dean tilts his head to one side, then the other, to inspect Sam’s handiwork. “You are a freak of nature.”

“You’re welcome,” says Sam. “I dare you to vanish your clothes through the show.”

The curtain falls just in time to save Dean from being arrested. He yanks his clothes back out of the air: shirt, then waistcoat, then pinstriped pants while Sam makes nice with the manager – won’t happen again, sir – and folds the bow tie neatly into his pocket. Then he conjures up a mirror to investigate what’s either a zit or an ingrown hair on his jaw.

“I think we should try Illinois next,” says Sam once he’s shaken the manager. He grins at Dean, forgetting to be grossed out by him picking at his face. Dean keeps picking. “Maybe we’ll see that ventriloquist again.”

Ventriloquist – “Oh, right. The uh, that Australian dude. Hey Sam, d’you remember the time you –”

“Ran away to be a ventriloquist, of course I do,” Sam says grumpily. Dean smirks. “So does everyone. You keep bringing it up.”

“You know if you’d actually been any good at it, you might have gotten away.”

“Good thing I wasn’t, then, or Dad would still be pissed at me now.”

“Yeah, well,” says Dean. He turns the mirror into a sheet of paper and watches it burn in his fingers, then looks up at Sam. “Illinois, then.”

Sam looks pleased.

  


Not that they’re not both big fans of driving in semi-aimless and increasingly desperate spirals through America, but Christ. Driving around pleading for three nights of work from bigged-up managers in small-time theatres is a long way from the regular spots their dad had going for himself all over the country. A leaky caravan is not a fucking ’67 Impala.

They hop around Illinois for a week, do not find the Australian ventriloquist, do not find a show, and do not collect two hundred dollars, then decide to try their luck at a town a day’s drive into Iowa that’s proven lucrative in the past.

“Sorry, honey,” says the woman behind the desk of the last theatre they try. Dean isn’t sure which of them she’s talking to. “No one pays to see magic tricks anymore.”

“Thank you,” says Sam before Dean gets the chance to turn her teeth blue. Magic tricks, indeed. “We’ll try somewhere else.”

Dean drives two hours out of town, then pulls over to let Sam take a piss at the side of the road.

Dean gets out and leans against the caravan, staring up. “So I was thinking,” he says. “Maybe we’re just turning the wrong kind of tricks. You know?”

Sam doesn’t reply.

“I mean,” he continues a little louder, “it’s not like we’d be the first illusionists to try our hands at a _different_ kind of magic.”

“Very funny,” Sam says, finally. He’s got his disapproving face on; Dean can hear his eyebrows knitting together.

“I try,” he tells Sam, mostly to piss him off. Whatever, it’s not like he was being serious. Well, mostly not. “You know, we could earn in an hour what we have in the last month if we put our heads together.” He pins a smirk on his face as Sam walks back up to the road. “Of course, I _say_ heads. What I really mean is –”

“No, man.”

“I’m just saying, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

Sam stares at him through the two front windows. “I said no, Dean.”

Dean gives it up. “Okay, then,” he says.

They’re quite literally chased out by an angry mother in the first town they try, and in the next one over Dean gets a bit too clever with a pair of off-duty cops, but they make it a whole week in Iowa City without having to leave before they’re ready. The day before they hit Nebraska, Sam spots a sign for dollar shots as they’re looking for a place to park overnight.

Dean turns his glass up on the table and uses the same hand to jab Sam in the very middle of his chest. “What I don’t get,” he says, very earnestly, “is how come we don’t have a glamorous assistant. Hey, Sam. Sammy? What’s the point in us doing magic if we don’t also get girls in slinky dresses volunteering to be magicked on?”

“Good point,” says Sam. “Excellent point. You’ve never said that before. You’re very original.”

“I’m very intelligent,” Dean tells him.

“All evidence to the contrary.”

Dean gives him an indignant look. “Don’t you like girls in slinky dresses?”

“Almost as much as you do,” Sam says, and Dean looks triumphant at him. “But I also like only having to pay for one motel room – ”

“I wouldn’t mind sharing with her, Sammy –”

“And eating –”

“So we’ll eat the rabbit, problem solved.”

“And only having to pay _ourselves_ for days worked. And also, I know you might not understand this part, but we are not going to audition women to work for us based on how attractive they are in,” Sam makes an illustrative gesture with the hand not engaged in gripping Dean’s arm, “red dresses.”

“Slinky dresses.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Oh.” Dean frowns at the three different-coloured shots lined up in front of him, considers drinking them all very quickly and then making a joke about where they’ve disappeared to, decides against it, and drinks the one on the right. Then he has an idea. “I think you should be the glamorous assistant.”

Sam laughs. Dean shrugs and has another shot.

Sam stops laughing. “You’re not serious.”

“Come on, Sam, think about it. We can do the show with one of us, as luck would have it there’s _two_ of us, so the other one can be all – slinky red dress.”

“Why does it have to be me? You do it!”

“Fuck off,” Dean says without missing a beat.

Sam narrows his eyes. “Fine,” he says, and holds out his fist. “On three.”

Dean is the motherfucking _champion_ of rock-paper-scissors, so. “Fine,” he says. Sometimes it’s good to indulge Sam’s little whims.

  


Sometimes it’s best to let Sam’s little whims just float on by. Dean stares between Sam and the very, very red dress he’s got swinging on his arm and tells him, “I do not even want to know why you own that. Okay, no. Tell me, why do you own that?”

“I own it as of twenty minutes ago,” Sam says. “Quit stalling.”

Dean takes the dress. It’s made out of something nice, slipping in his fingers, and there’s a slit all the way up one side. He holds it up against himself in the mirror.

“You, um. Might need to shave your legs,” Sam says.

“Try and remember I’m not actually a woman,” Dean says without looking at him. “Go rearrange your hair or something, you’re getting in the way of my creative process.”

He has to go commando for it to look right, but the satin feels nice and it fits okay even if he is kind of scared to sit down. It finishes somewhere below the middle of his calf and the slit goes right up past his knee, so Sam better hope he doesn’t end up flashing a roomful of 12-year-olds in the middle of a trick or they’re going to be jumping town a hell of a lot quicker than usual – even for them.

There’s kohl and some other stuff on the vanity. Dean blacks his eyes darker than he normally would and rubs Vaseline and rouge into his lips like he normally wouldn’t, and holds his breath when he gets up to roll stockings up his legs, and that’s when he looks up to see Sam staring at him from the door.

Dean smirks and flutters his eyelashes. He looks over his shoulder at the mirror and wiggles his ass. “Normally I don’t like to brag, but I am a gorgeous woman, Sam.”

Sam doesn’t reply, which Dean takes to mean as appropriately gobsmacked assent. “Need you to zip up the back for me, I can’t reach all the way,” he says, and turns around impatiently when Sam still doesn’t say anything. “Sam? Little help here?”

Sam looks like he’s fighting every impulse going in favour of keeping his face blank. “Yeah,” he says eventually, and lets go of the doorframe to cross the room to Dean.

There’s a burn around the neckline that Dean hadn’t noticed before. He eyes it while Sam zips the dress all the way up for him, keeping his hands off Dean’s skin, and then he steps away.

Dean smoothes his hands down his hips to pull the wrinkles out. One of the straps keeps falling off his shoulder. He tugs it back up.

Sam clears his throat. “I got you these, too,” he says, and passes Dean a pair of flat red shoes that must have taken him almost as long to find in Dean’s size as the dress. “Thought you wouldn’t want to learn heels.”

“Fuck no,” says Dean. He fits his feet into the shoes and looks up at Sam, pouting his lips. “So what do you think?”

Sam hesitates. He twirls his finger in a circle in the air and Dean gets it, so he turns around on the spot.

“Good,” Sam tells him. “You look really good.”

On stage for a tiny audience that nevertheless will not shut up, cocking his hip and sashaying around a bit whenever he feels he isn’t being appreciated properly, Dean remembers to lean in to Sam and tell him, “I will kill you in your sleep for this.”

“Don’t be like that, baby.” Sam holds out his hand for Dean to support himself climbing into the Goldin’s box. “Is that any way for a lady to talk?”

“This lady’s gonna punch the jackass in the front row somewhere he doesn’t want to be punched, unless he stops trying to look up my dress. So yeah, I think so.”

“Want me to saw him in half instead? Maybe I’ll forget how to do it right and saw all the way through him,” Sam murmurs and slides the lid back on the box.

Dean’s aware that they’re going to have to drop a trick off the end of the show if they don’t hurry things along a bit, but right now he doesn’t give a fuck. He flexes his fingers where Sam can see them. “Nah,” he says. “I fight my own battles. I’ll let you know if I change my mind after the show. One of us might need to wear this again one day.”

Sam smiles but doesn’t answer, then picks up the saw and tells the audience to look away if they’re feeling squeamish.

  


The first theatre they find that has a regular nightly space for them is on the dilapidated side, but you learn to get used to that when you’re one of the last connoisseurs of a dying art.

“Think about it,” Dean tells the manager of Harvelle’s from the other side of her desk, “the last connoisseurs of a dying art, customers love that kinda thing. They’ll be lining up to see us for miles.”

He gives her his most charming smile and himself ten points when her expression softens.

“Illusionists,” she says.

“Very, very good illusionists,” Dean tells her. “The best.”

Her mouth twitches and her eyes flick to Sam. “He telling the truth?”

“Every word, ma’am,” Sam says. She’s never had any practice at facing that look down, so Dean doesn’t give Sam any points at all when she tells him to call her Ellen. “All right then,” says Sam. “Ellen, we’re the very best.” His eyes are all crinkly.

Ellen spends a moment looking between them. Then she says, “Been a while since I had illusionists working here,” and Dean tries not to fall down in relief. “The last one was a good friend of mine for a long time. Your first show’s tomorrow night at 8, boys, better make it a good one. There’s a couple real cheap motels just down the street if you need a place to stay while you’re here.”

“Thank you,” says Dean, meaning it.

They get a room at the first motel they see.

“I like her,” says Sam once they’ve got the caravan parked below their window. He deposits the rabbit hutch on one end of the kitchen countertop and reaches inside to run his hand over the rabbit’s back. “Ellen, I mean. But, more than that, I like that tonight I will be sleeping in a real bed, with a real duvet and a real mattress and everything.”

“Let’s cook the rabbit in celebration,” Dean suggests.

“Yeah, and tomorrow we can have all the playing cards for breakfast.”

“If that’s what you feel like eating, sure.”

“We’re not cooking Roger, Dean,” says Sam, and then because the universe loves Dean more than it loves his brother, the rabbit bites his finger. Sam yelps and withdraws his hand. He jams his finger in his mouth and talks around it. “Still no.”

Dean stares at where Sam’s finger dips into his mouth, trying to remember – again – if rabbit bites are one of the things you’re supposed to get shots for. It’s not like they can afford it anyway. “You think it’s asking too much of the audience to get them to imagine the rabbit as well? Dude. We’re the _very best_.”

“Bobby’d be insufferable, though,” says Sam, which is true, he would be. “He’d call us nightly just to bitch about how we’ve started believing our own press.”

Dean takes a look through to the one bedroom and decides he wants the bed by the window. He dumps his bag at the foot and crawls up the length of the mattress, and slumps face-down with his mouth open against the pillow, testing it out. Then he rolls over and pushes all of Sam’s crap onto the floor, because if Sam didn’t want it there then he shouldn’t have left it on Dean’s bed in the first place. That shit’s not comfortable to sleep on.

  


Right around the time Dean started learning some of the cooler tricks of the trade from his dad, he convinced himself that Sam was just another illusion. Put like that it sounds real simple, but Dean’s pushing thirty and he’s no closer to working it out.

Okay, that’s a lie. Turns out that putting all your eggs in an illusory basket fucks up your hold on reality, and sometimes the only thing you can do about that is lie awake all night to make sure your brother’s still there in the morning. Who knew?

As motel beds go, this one isn’t so bad. Dean watches Sam frowning in his sleep, and tries to look forward to being too tired to stay awake any longer. Another few hours should do it.

  


Dean doesn’t usually call a show before they’ve done it, because that’s the kind of thing that gets you complacent. He’s got a good feeling about this one, though.

“Think you can remember what to do, Sammy?” he asks as they’re getting ready. “You want to sit back a bit, let me show you how it’s done? You just give me a nod.”

Sam looks up from the waistcoat he’s hurriedly darning, apparently for the sole purpose of wrinkling his nose at Dean. “How about you give _me_ a nod if you think you’re going to set the stage on fire again,” he says, “and then I’ll have time to save you. Again.”

Okay, so not the sole purpose. Dean concedes the point and makes what he thinks is a reasonable attempt at doing up his bow tie before Sam pulls it out of his fingers and ties it for him.

By no stretch of the imagination are people lining up for miles to see them. Dean isn’t too worried. It takes a while for word to spread, and then for it to go around again once people start telling each other that yes, they really are that good.

“Not quite what I was expecting, boys,” says Ellen as they bow off stage, but she doesn’t look pissed or anything. Dean grins at her and lets Sam swipe the leftover ash out of his hair. He pulls one brimming shot glass after another out of his mouth and hands them around.

It’s hard to tell when every spotlight going is dazzling you, but Dean thinks there aren’t as many empty seats the next night. Few more kids than normal. He walks down his line of hats, yanking flowers and fireworks and daggers and diamonds from every one, then in a fit of annoyance plucks his own from his head and tosses it to Sam. Sam catches it, peers inside, and throws him the rabbit back. “There you go,” he says.

“Screw you,” Dean says, holding the rabbit up by its ears the better to scowl at it, “I’m still better at finding it.”

“My brother’s a sore second best,” Sam tells the audience. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

“Big words,” says Dean, and turns the rabbit into an apple. He takes a bite out of it, because sometimes revenge isn’t sweet. Sometimes it comes in green.

Because they get lots of practice at choosing motels to stay in, theirs happens to be three blocks down from what looks like the bar of preference for everyone age fake ID and over. Two successful shows down, Dean takes it as a big old thumbs-up from fate or God or whoever to go drink beer and hustle.

They’ve tricked their way into enough drinks to last them most of the week when Dean puts his cards away. He knocks his glass against Sam’s, and that’s when the bartender turns up at their table.

“Um,” says Dean. He isn’t sure whether to take hope from how long it’s taken him to come over, or to call it cruel punishment after a night’s work.

“You’re illusionists?” asks the bartender by way of introduction.

“That we are.”

“Honest ones,” adds Sam, and blushes – blushes! – when the bartender inclines his head to smirk at him.

“Don’t think I’ve ever met one of those before,” he says while Dean eyes the blush sliding down Sam’s neck.

“Stop staring at me, Dean,” Sam says.

The bartender asks them if they’ll come back the next few nights. “Hasn’t been this busy for a while,” he says. “Your drinks are on the house every night if you do.”

Dean glances at Sam, who shrugs. Working the same bar over and over isn’t really their thing.

“No offense,” he says, “but I think we’re good for drinks. You need one of us to work the bar, anything like that? ”

“Wouldn’t be asking if I did,” says the bartender, but his tone is good-natured enough. “Have a good night, boys.”

  


Ten days after they start working for Ellen, fall sets in with a vengeance.

“Amazing,” mumbles Sam through his duvet. “And in November, too.”

Dean rolls his eyes. He pulls all the covers up to his nose, wishing he’d thought to put socks on the night before to compensate for the mile of space his feet stick out. “Whatever,” he says. “You don’t like it either.”

They listen to the weather for a while before Sam clears his throat. “I think we should do a horror show tonight.”

Dean rolls to face him, surprised. They don’t do many horror shows; too much work to set up and too messy to clean up afterwards, and all the fake blood they need to throw around isn’t easy to store and doesn’t come cheap. But the shows are fucking awesome. “Sure,” he says. “Have we got any blood?”

Sam beams. “Not yet,” he says, turning it into a sort of excited chirp. “We will by tonight, though, I’ll make some up in the tub.”

“You are way too old to get this excited about a bit of fake blood, dude.”

“Like hell,” Sam replies, grinning wide and sideways at Dean. “I’ll let you add the ketchup, if you want.”

“I can’t wait,” Dean tells him.

At least two members of the audience stumble out of the room when Sam sways to the front with bugs crawling out of his eye sockets, but Dean figures it’s worth it for the blinding grin Sam gives him lurching back upstage. “Having fun, Sammy?” he asks, pitching it loud enough for the audience to hear.

“Reattach my hands and I’ll show you exactly how much fun I’m having,” Sam replies, and waves the stumps Dean’s way.

  


Without feeling particularly inclined to analyse why, Dean decides he wants to be the glamorous assistant again.

“Dean?”

Dean takes his head out of the closet and turns around. “The dress,” he says. “I was looking for it.”

Sam’s got it hidden in his bag, pressed between notebooks and wrapped in paper. He hands it over when they’re in the dressing room. “I didn’t think you’d, um. It’s all creased, I didn’t expect –”

Dean smirks. “It’s tiny and red, no one gives a shit.”

“Not that tiny.”

“Which is a major flaw, by the way.”

“I was buying it for you,” Sam says. “I wasn’t really thinking about whether it would show off your cleavage to best advantage.”

“A fatal error,” Dean tells him, shaking his head, because sometimes he thinks Sam really was switched at birth.

Sam hesitates. “I’ll just, um – I’ll wait outside.”

“Sam,” says Dean.

“Pretty sure you don’t need my help putting that on,” Sam tells him, then stares at the floor like he’s waiting for it to swallow him. He attempts a smile at Dean’s knees.

Dean’s little brother, ladies and gentlemen. “Just go,” Dean says. “Seriously. Please.”

Sam picks up his bundle of clothes from the dressing table and flees, and it’s only when they’re standing at the edge of the stage that Dean can ask him to do up the back of the dress.

There’s a girl on the other side of the stage doing something last-minute to the lights, looking much more interested in what’s going on between Dean and his brother. Dean ignores her and dips his head, registering the press of Sam’s fingers through the dress.

“Thank you,” he says when Sam takes his fingers away.

“You’re welcome,” says Sam, just as quiet.

  


On the last day in November, Dean walks into the bathroom in a search for Q-tips and nearly coughs up a lung when he finds Sam folded up in the bath with his head tilted back and sweat dripping down his nose.

“Fuck you,” Sam says once Dean’s mostly finished laughing. “I’m ill, this is – necessary rest and relaxation.”

“You don’t look very relaxed,” Dean tells him. “You look like a dying tulip.”

“Fuck you,” says Sam again. Dean actually feels a bit sorry for him, if this is what’s happened to his comebacks. He finds a bundle of swabs in the cabinet and digs one into his ear, tilting his head to the side for better access.

“Dude,” says Sam.

“Shut up,” Dean replies, and flicks the little stick away. He leans against the basin and fixes his eyes on Sam.

“Did you not hear the part where I told you I’m ill?”

“Yeah,” says Dean, “but if I’m getting it then I already have.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean. Seriously. Can you please just find someone – _anyone_ – to harass instead of me?”

Once upon a time, Sam would’ve had his head in Dean’s lap instead of hanging awkwardly over the edge of the bath. “Not today,” Dean tells him.

Sam shuts his eyes again.

Dean thinks. “Sam,” he says. “When did you get the dress?”

Sam doesn’t open his eyes. Dean stares at the sweat dewing his skin and wants to wipe it away. “Year after Stanford,” Sam says. Then, “You were with that, um, bassist. Maisie something.”

“Drummer,” Dean says after a minute.

Sam runs his tongue across his upper lip. “Yeah,” he says.

  


A couple Sundays later, it’s just about warm enough to spend some time outside if they wear every item of clothing they own, so they head to the river to practice.

Sam’s going on about some vitamin deficiency, and Dean’s pretending not to listen as they pass by the theatre. They’re most of the way down the street when someone shouts Dean’s name.

“Just can’t get enough of me, can you, Ellen?” says Dean when she reaches them. “Don’t worry, it’s normal.”

Sam shoves him easily and says, “Sorry about him. I’m doing all I can to help him but nothing’s working yet.”

She shares a look that’s trying to be a smile between them. “Morning, boys. Have you got a minute?”

It was nice while it lasted. Dean glances at his brother and back to Ellen. “Sure,” he says, and wonders if it’s too late to get their money back for the room this week.

“You want to come inside?”

“It’s all right,” says Sam. “You don’t need to sugar-coat it for us.”

Ellen nods. “I’m sorry, boys,” she says, looking it. “This is a bad year. If I could keep you on every day then I would.”

And, okay, that’s not as bad as Dean was expecting. He knocks his hand against Sam’s arm where Ellen can’t see and asks her how many nights she can give them.

  


They get two shows a week and every other Saturday night, and spend the rest of the afternoon shouting at each other about whether to stay or try to find work somewhere else. Having gotten Sam to agree on staying, Dean walks from one side of town to another to beg for work, and eventually finds a carwash willing to employ him six nights a week if he’ll start in half an hour’s time.

In the morning, just when it’s thinking about getting light, he tramps up the stairs to their room, too tired to coax the decrepit elevator into working. He decides on the way up that he doesn’t care if he wakes Sam coming in. Sam could have had ten hours’ sleep by now if he wanted, and Dean really isn’t in the mood for sleeping on the sofa. It’s a fuck-ton too late for Dean’s bedtime and plenty early enough for Sam to go commune with nature or whatever.

Turns out he doesn’t have to worry about waking Sam anyway, because neither of the beds have been slept in and Sam isn’t anywhere.

A hundred years later, the door clicks open and Sam edges through the gap. It slams behind him and Sam swears under his breath, then again, much louder, when he catches sight of Dean watching him from the window. “Christ, Dean. Why are you still up?”

Dean ignores him in favour of chucking his cell phone at his chest. “You think it’d kill you to keep that on you? Use that fancy college education to leave a note?”

“Dude,” Sam says. “I fell asleep in the caravan by mistake. I didn’t go anywhere, calm down.”

Jesus Christ. Dean is too old for this shit. He rubs a hand over his face. “Yeah, well … don’t, okay.”

He was talking about the part where Sam fell asleep in the caravan, but to the surprise of everyone in the room, Sam’s expression goes sour as he jumps to entirely the wrong conclusion. “Whatever, Dad,” he says, his lip curling. “Sorry for, for breaking curfew. I’ll do better.”

“I didn’t know where you were,” says Dean shortly. “I’ll remember to check my crystal ball next time. Work was six hours too long and fucking boring, by the way, thanks for asking.”

“Stop telling yourself I’m leaving,” Sam tells him, having plainly not listened to a single word Dean just said. “I’m not; not without you. Just, just try and have a bit of faith in me, all right?”

He turns and heads for the bathroom, dropping his bag on the sofa. But that, Dean will not take. “Hey,” he says. Sam stops right where he is, head kinked down like he knows he’s crossed a line and has already guessed what Dean’s about to say.

Dean honestly couldn’t give a fuck how sorry he is. “Say that again and I’ll pack up your shit myself,” he says.

Sam swallows. It’s kind of loud. “Dean – ”

“I’m not scared you’ll leave, Sam,” says Dean, right over him. “I’m scared that if I clap my hands you’ll disappear.”

He almost bites his tongue off trying not to add _think I told you that once_ because he’s not that much of a dick even though his brother’s aspiring to it right now. Dean knows very well that Sam remembers that conversation.

  


It’s been exactly three weeks since the last time Dean had his drink handed to him over the top of a bar. “That’s two and a half weeks too long,” he tells Sam. “Christ, dude. Shoulda told me I was turning into you.”

“Is that a hint for me to go and sleep in the caravan? Because it’s like, twenty degrees out. You’re gonna owe me until the end of time.”

“Please, it’s not like it’s snowing. Man up.” Dean frowns. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Again, it’s fucking cold out there. No.”

“Come on, Sammy, get a beer with me. I’ll buy it for you, how about that?”

“Our money comes from the same place,” Sam tells him, because apparently Dean didn’t do a very good job teaching him to hear the right parts of a conversation. Like, say, the parts where someone else offers to buy your drink for you.

There’s a girl at the bar that recognises him. He lets her try and place him from the other side of it for as long as it takes him to finish his first drink, then magicks himself into the stool next to her and turns her wine glass into a bunch of roses while she’s not looking.

“Oh,” she says, delighted, and jumps when she realises he’s sitting beside her. “You’re an illusionist! I saw your show last week.”

“I know,” says Dean, leaning in a little. “I remember you.”

“Sure you do,” says the girl. She has a good smile, so Dean waits for someone to open the outside door, then turns all the roses white, timing it to the moment the cool air licks the back of her neck. Sam’s more into cutesy stuff like this, but it’s not like he’s here to see Dean using all his moves, so whatever.

She lets him buy her a drink only on the basis that he disappeared her last one before she was done with it, and tells him to call her Annie.

“Tell me about your brother,” Annie says on the second drink. “The one you do your show with.”

“When I was twelve I nearly killed him,” says Dean, and that puts her off just fine.

On the fourth drink, she blinks and says, “Your brother!”

Dean still isn’t even close to drunk enough to talk about Sam with strangers. “Swell guy,” he says, wondering if this is going to be a theme. He hopes not.

Annie’s shaking her head, though, all wide-eyed. “No, no – he’s here!”

She points over his shoulder, but Dean’s already looking around for him. “Where?”

“Here,” says Sam. _Here_ is right at Dean’s back, one hand brushing his elbow, so close that leaning into him is the only sensible thing to do.

“Aw, Sammy,” Dean says, head tipped up. “Did you miss me?”

“Missed my drinks,” Sam says. “All … eight of them. Christ, Dean.”

“Those aren’t all mine,” Dean protests. “I donated yours to Annie. Because you weren’t here.”

“Didn’t say you could go handing them out, though,” says Sam, grinning at Annie over Dean’s head. At least, Dean assumes it’s Annie. He’s looking at Sam right now.

He kind of expects Sam to stay with him, having come all the way out here, but somewhere between stealing the rest of Dean’s drink and making a start on the next he winds up on the other side of the bar. Dean keeps his eyes on him, the cards in his fingers, not hustling, just having a good time.

“You two ever get sick of each other?” Annie’s been watching him watch Sam, bizarrely fond for someone who only just met Dean an hour ago.

Dean smirks. Sam Winchester, beloved pain in the ass. “Daily,” he says, and doesn’t look away from him for a second.

Sam makes a gesture across the bar like he’s flicking an invisible card at him, and Dean lifts his hand to grab it out of the air, licks it with relish. He takes a real deck of cards out of his pocket, shuffles them where everyone can see, and fans them face down for Annie. “Pick a card,” he says, and when she does so jerks his head in Sam’s direction and says, “you want to tell them what it is?”

She raises her voice to say, “Seven of hearts,” over the noise of the bar, and looks delighted when Sam’s audience break into applause.

  


They do their three shows for the week. Every night Dean has to go to work at the carwash straight after, and at the end of the third he stumbles back to the room feeling like he’s spent it dangled upside down over a barbecue.

Sam tugs him through the door and pulls Dean’s shirt off for him, then pushes him into bed and tucks the covers around him.

Dean waits for Sam to go back to sleep, and then he gets up and takes the extra blanket he’s acquired off his bed, placing it back over Sam and arranging it around his body.

He gets back into bed and thinks about going to sleep.

A minute later he turns onto his other side to face Sam, eyes wide, one hand pressed into the mattress so it can’t stretch out between them.

Dean wakes up when the light falls on his face, which means it’s sometime in the afternoon. He doesn’t feel any more awake than he did coming back from work at dawn, rough all over like someone’s picked up an eraser and done a bad job of scrubbing him off the page.

Sam’s reading on the dollhouse balcony with a Greek-English dictionary at his feet, wrapped up in what looks like every scarf they own and the beanie Dean keeps trying to lose for him. Dean leans against the bathroom door and stays still, not really minding if Sam notices him watching, just wanting to rest his eyes on his brother in the sunshine.

“You’re staring again.”

“I know.” Dean’s lips curve even though Sam won’t notice it. It’s not really meant for him to see anyway. “Wondering how I ended up with a brother like you.”

“A literate one?”

For one long moment, Dean lets himself think about saying _no, Sam._ “Yeah, Sam, that.”

Sam turns around in his chair to look at him. It’s cold, and his mouth is very red. “Stop talking, Dean,” he says. “I’m trying to read.”

When he’s finished his shower, Dean might say something about how most people read books in English, something Sam should think about trying. Right now Sam’s looking at him in a way that once meant _get on your knees and don’t open your mouth until I give you something to put in it_.

That’s a long time ago now, but it’s not like Dean’s got many things to confuse it with, so he shuts his mouth.

And he stays on his feet, but only just.

  


The next time Ellen comes to their dressing room door, she’s holding a bottle of whiskey. Sam hands the bottle to Dean and leans down to give Ellen a hug. “Thanks for letting us stay this long,” he says.

Four silent hours down the road, Sam catches Dean’s eye in the rear-view and grins.

Dean raises his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Turn the caravan around.”

“Okay,” says Dean once he’s liberated Led Zep IV from Sam’s flexing fingers. “What’s this way that isn’t the way we’ve been going all afternoon?”

Sam shrugs. “The Impala.”

They manage to sell the caravan on the cheap to a bunch of kids just out of college. A day later, Bobby drives out to pick them up and take them back to his place, grumbling about how he could have gotten them twice the money if they’d have told him they were selling.

Dean makes it halfway through the junk yard before either Sam or Bobby have gotten out of the car, and then he’s sliding the tarp like lace from the Impala, smoothing his hands across the hood and saying, “Hey, baby, did you miss me?”

Dean and his girl again, just the two of them, like it hasn’t been for months. Dean gets in and stretches out along the front seat, feet in the foot well where Sam’s normally are, and shuts his eyes so he can breathe her all the way in.

  


They flip a coin to decide on a direction to travel, and a few days later have themselves two weeks’ worth of shows in a theatre in Eagle, Colorado.

They’re on day four when Dean stomps out of the bathroom with dripping hair and a towel around his waist. He goes first to his own and then Sam’s bag, pulling clothes out and dropping them on the floor until he finds one lone tealight in a corner.

“Looking for these?” Sam’s got five candles lit in a tight row in front of him, flames invisible in the dusk. “You can have one if you want.”

On second thought, Dean really can’t be fucked with finishing his shower now. “No,” he says, and picks up the shirt at the top of the mess on the floor.

Sam slicks his fingertip through the wax dripping down one of the candlesticks and watches it case white around his nail, then does something quick and clumsy with the other hand that knocks all five to the carpet. “Shit –”

Dean swears and leaps at the candles to put them all out at once. “Be less of a fucking idiot, Sam, Christ.”

“All right,” says Sam, annoyed. “Calm down, it was an accident. No harm, no foul.”

“Whatever.” Dean yanks on his boxers. “Tell that to the motel owner after you burn his primary source of income down.”

“Like you honestly give a crap about that,” Sam says, snatching up the candles and stuffing them back into his bag. He turns around to glare at Dean. “What’s got you so pissy all of a sudden?” He narrows his eyes. “Sleep well last night?”

For some fucking reason unknown to Dean, Sam’s voice has snapped from idle confusion to doing that pissed off shaky thing. Dean did not sleep well last night, fuck Sam very much. Dean lay awake waiting for Sam to disappear last night. “Peachy,” he says, baring his teeth as he buttons his jeans. “Like a baby.”

“How about the night before?”

“Even better.”

“Right,” says Sam. His lips curl into a mocking smile, and Dean has just enough time to want to smack it off his face before Sam continues, “Y’know, Dean, maybe you should think about getting a cast of me. Then if you do wake up and I’m not there anymore, you’ll be able to get another _Sammy_ made, and you won’t ever have to worry where he’s disappeared to.”

Dean lets that thought slide fingers around his throat for exactly the length of a heartbeat. Then he picks up the keys to the Impala from the table. “Okay,” he says, and doesn’t bother shutting the door behind him.

He’s within sight of the car when Sam gets a hand on his arm and yanks him around. “Dean –”

Dean punches him, putting his whole weight into it. Sam reels and drops to his knees, one hand on the gravel and the other pressed to his jaw, blinking at the ground. Dean turns away, shaking his fist out and swearing.

He turns back once he’s sure none of his fingers are broken. “Look at me.” Sam ignores him, so he takes a step forward and jerks Sam’s head up with a hand on his chin. He glares until Sam takes his hand away from his face, and tilts his head into the light of the streetlamp. There’s a thin red line where Dean’s ring cut his lip, and tomorrow his skin is going to be vibrant.

Dean lets go of him and walks away without another word.

He drives until he finds a bar and leaves with a tiny redhead called Emma. He pushes her back against a cabinet in her kitchen and drops to his knees when she asks him to, holding her up with his hands on her hips while he uses his mouth on her, and when she comes he ignores whatever name she says and presses his face right up into her.

He fucks her in her bed, keeping his eyes on hers so that he sees something other than Sam on his knees in front of him, too close, eyes dark and mouth open like a dare.

He stops at a 7/11 on the drive home and buys a bag of frozen peas. “Put this on your face,” he tells Sam when he walks back into the room. He waits for him to look up from his book before tossing the bag at him.

Sam swaps the damp towel he’s got balled up against his jaw for the peas. “Thank you,” he says. Dean nods. “Dean …”

Dean waits.

“I shouldn’t have said – that, what I said. That was kind of fucked up.”

“You’re right, it was.” Dean kicks back on the bed, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. He’s sweaty under his clothes, didn’t bother showering after he left the girl’s apartment. He shuts his eyes briefly. “Moving on. It’s Saturday night, dude, what the hell are you doing in bed already?”

“Counting my teeth,” Sam replies.

“You’re welcome, Sammy.”

In the morning, the first thing he sees is Sam sitting up against the headboard and staring gloomily into the magnifying side of the shaver’s mirror, prodding at the bruise that’s taken over half of his face. “You look like you lost a battle with a sledgehammer.”

“Thank you,” says Sam. “You always say the things I want to hear.”

“I am an excellent brother,” Dean allows. He leans across to Sam’s bed to get a better look, but Sam grimaces and shoves him away. “What was that for?”

“You smell – pungent.”

“The word you’re looking for is fragrant. And manly.”

“Not sure you can be both those things at once.”

“I can be anything I want to be, Sammy,” Dean says. “Dreams are what lives are built on.” He gets off the bed and stretches until his whole body bows back, eyes closed, hands behind his head and t-shirt pulling against his chest.

He turns around to find Sam’s eyes black as the ace on Dean, his mouth unsmiling, and has the disconcerting thought that that little trick might not have won him the round after all.

“Amen,” says Sam at last, and he doesn’t let Dean look away for a long time.

  


Their last day in Eagle, Sam’s been a silent, sulky little bitch all afternoon, and Dean’s too distracted with trying to irritate him into talking to watch his own mouth.

He leans his elbows on the table between them and steeples his fingers. “Louisa,” he says, drawing the syllables out all reminiscent and appreciative. “She was very enthusiastic, you’d have liked her. She really put her back into it, if you know what I mean.”

“I really don’t,” says Sam. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“I thought you liked learning new things, Sammy.”

Sam just rolls his eyes. “Whatever, dude.”

The server arrives with their food, and Dean sits back just enough to let her set it down. “Thanks, sweetheart,” he says, looking up at the last minute to give her a wink. There’s a pronounced swing in her hips when she walks away, and a phone number on the back of the check when they’re done. Dean folds it into his pocket.

“You planning on using that?” Sam asks once they’re backstage and in their dressing room.

“You want my help getting girls’ numbers, Sam, all you gotta do is say.”

Sam tries to give him an exasperated look but his lips are twitching. Dean gives himself a mental pat on the back for pulling something other than the bitchface out of Sam, scrunching up the slip of paper and dropping it through the wires of Roger’s cage without a second thought. “Feel better?”

Sam flips him off, but he follows it up by holding out his hand for Dean’s bow tie. “Come here, then.”

Dean ambles over. “It’s okay to be jealous,” he says airily, tilting his head up to give Sam’s hands space to work. “I would be, too.”

There’s a beat, and then Sam says, “Really?”

“Sure. Me, going out and getting laid while you stay in and – and –”

Sam’s expression is so mild it’s unnerving. He finishes the knot but doesn’t let go, and asks into the silence, “Should I be jealous, Dean?”

“No,” says Dean.

Sam waits, nods, and steps away. He picks up the candles he’s been practicing with the last couple of weeks and slips them up his shirt sleeves, then turns around and without ceremony assesses every inch of Dean with his eyes. His gaze clings to the spit-shine of Dean’s shoes, his fingers and the heavy press of his cock in his pants, and Dean’s head goes absolutely blank when Sam rolls his lip between his teeth and says, “Good.”

  


Sam storms offstage the instant the curtain is down.

“Sam!” Dean shouts after him. Sam ignores him, yanking the tie out from under his collar and shoving into the dressing room. He doesn’t look up when Dean bangs in after him with the rabbit in his arms. “What the fuck, Sam?”

“What the fuck _me_? What the fuck _you_? Have you _lost your mind_?”

Dean gapes at him. “Meaning what?”

“You set yourself on fire!” Sam shouts. “Again, Dean! You set yourself on fire _again_.”

“Because I knew you could handle it if it went wrong! You did last time, didn’t you? I’m okay, aren’t I?”

“Last time I had a bucket of blood in each hand,” Sam says furiously. “All I had to do was throw them at you to stop you from burning to death.”

“Oh yeah, burning to death,” Dean says, making a mocking gesture. “I was really going up in flames, there, Sam – Jesus _Christ_ , Roger!” He forces the rabbit down into the cage and sticks his finger in his mouth.

Sam throws Dean’s ruined waistcoat at him. It lands in a pathetic heap between them, criss-crossing black lines interfering with the pattern. “Dean,” he says through gritted teeth, “there are things I can do without, and things I _cannot_ do without, and on the can do without list there are lots of things and on the cannot do without list there is one thing. _One._ And I am asking you to please stop doing stupid crap like whatever that was so that I don’t have to worry about you _all the fucking time._ ”

Dean snaps before he can think any better of it. “Then stop fucking staring at me like you’re an inch away from fucking me, Sam. It’s kinda distracting when all my fingers are on fire.”

Sam goes red. Dean watches as he chews on the inside of his mouth, lips pouting without Sam realising it. “You’re telling me to stop,” he says at last.

 _No_ , thinks Dean wildly, and nods anyway. “Yeah.”

Sam blinks at him. He picks up Dean’s shirt in one hand and the keys to the Impala in the other, then walks up to Dean and presses the shirt low to his chest. “Tell that to your dick,” he says.

The door slams shut behind him. Dean wastes exactly one second staring at it, then dashes forward and yanks it open.

Sam’s standing on the other side of the hallway, head down and one hand on the wall with the keys dangling. He turns to look over his shoulder at Dean, eyes narrowed.

Dean stares at him. “What do you want, Sam?”

There’s a pause. Then Sam takes his hand off the wall and turns around properly, backing Dean into the dressing room. He leaves the door swinging and only stops when the back of Dean’s head hits the naked light bulb. “What do you think?”

“I think you want me on my knees. Begging for your cock in my mouth.”

“Wrong. That’s what you want.”

“How nice, interests in common.”

“Shut up,” says Sam, and has the fucking nerve to sound bored.

Dean sneers. “Or what? You’ll run out again?”

Sam doesn’t reply. He rolls his eyes and sprawls down and out on the couch that’s dying against the wall. He spreads his legs and nods at the gap between them on the floor. “You can sit there.”

For a blinding moment, relief claws its way through Dean’s insides like fury, and he sways on his feet before moving an inch.

“No,” says Sam when he drops to his knees. “Not like that. Facing the other way.”

“But –”

“Where you are – yeah, like that, turn around. Put your back against the couch.” Sam’s legs bracket Dean’s body, not quite touching him. “Slouch down a bit.”

Dean does as he’s told. When he’s arranged himself as Sam wants, he opens his mouth and tells him, “This is all very cute, Sammy. You gonna braid my hair now?”

“No,” says Sam quietly. “Now you’re gonna take your dick out and jack it until you come. Without touching me.”

Dean says, “Oh,” and drags a breath.

He unzips his pants with trembling fingers. There’s a wet stain at the front of his boxers, and Dean lets his mouth drop open a bit when he pushes the heel of his hand down the ridge of his cock; once, twice before he feels Sam’s leg twitch against his shoulder. “Take it out.”

“The door’s still open,” he mumbles. He pulls his cock out of his pants without waiting for Sam to reply, biting his lip as he curls his fingers around the head and pushing his boxers down behind his balls with his other hand. “Fuck –”

He switches hands and tugs slowly, twisting when his palm reaches the head. Sam’s leg is an inch away from his arm, and without really thinking about it Dean tilts his head and mouths at it through his pants, eyes closed, enjoying the prickle against his lips. He lets out an aggrieved breath when Sam jerks away. “Please, Sam –”

“I said no touching.” Sam’s voice is rough. “Pay attention.”

“Always do.” Dean switches back, taking his balls into one hand and rolling them up against his dick. He opens his mouth again with an effort. “Christ, Sam, the door.”

“Better hope no one looks in,” says Sam, low. Dean moans at the thought of it, gripping tighter and letting his eyes fall closed. “So fucking hot, Dean. You think anyone who sees you like this is gonna keep walking?” Dean arches against the back of the couch, his head pushing into the cushion between Sam’s legs, desperately trying to keep his voice down and his hands to himself. He jacks his cock harder, lifting his free hand to bite down on the thumb knuckle. Sam’s breathing is almost in time with his, rasping backdrop to the slap of his palm. When Dean feels his hand slide down his face and curl under his jaw, it’s everything he can do not to nuzzle into it.

Sam pushes the tip of his finger up to Dean’s lip, and Dean drops his own hand, panting. “S’okay,” Sam murmurs. Dean sucks Sam’s finger into his mouth, licking at the familiar sulphuric taste of matches, then lets it slip free to groan, “Sam –”

“You can come,” Sam says into his ear, and Dean swears and does.

When he opens his eyes, Sam’s moved away from him, hand gone from his face and feet planted out of Dean’s sightline on either side. Dean coughs and shuffles forward on his ass to grab the ruined waistcoat, wiping himself off with the satiny underside.

He gets to his feet and makes himself turn to face Sam, sticky and mortifyingly nervous. Sam meets his eye but doesn’t say anything, and then his gaze moves down to Dean’s mouth so carefully that Dean can’t watch. He looks instead at the way Sam’s sitting: legs spread so wide, one arm draped across the back of the couch and the other resting on his thigh. The dress pants he’s wearing do nothing to hide his erection. Dean wants to close the door.

“We should go back to the room,” he says instead, trying not to hear the serrated edge in his voice. Sam’s still looking at his mouth. “Get some sleep.”

“Should we?”

Dean hesitates. He looks at the door and back at Sam. “Or –” he starts, then shuts his mouth.

Sam stands up. Dean’s having some difficulty working out whether he wants Sam to shove him into the wall with a thigh between his legs or if the floor will do, and mostly feels cheated when Sam reaches the door and says without looking back, “Don’t forget Roger.”

Dean swallows. “Okay, then,” he says to the empty room.

  


In the morning, Dean finds Sam’s bed empty and a note on the bathroom mirror that just says _coffee_. He stares at it for a long time before getting in the shower, taking his toothbrush in with him while Sam isn’t around to bitch about how weird that is, and when he gets out, Sam’s back. He hasn’t got coffee and is instead leaning against the window and drinking a glass of milk.

“Dude,” Dean says. “At least drink it from the carton.”

Sam makes a face and lowers the glass, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Don’t be gross.”

“Just saying.” Dean can’t decide the best way to go about getting dressed, what with the thing where he jerked off at Sam’s feet yesterday. He hovers between the beds, wishing Sam would turn his back or at least stop staring, then catches the smirk toying with his lips and considers hitting him. He pulls the towel off and throws it at Sam, feeling a tiny bit better when he manages to duck right into its trajectory.

They set off for Colorado Springs because they haven’t been there in a while and Dean wants to see if that diner’s still in business. He spends the first half hour of the drive painfully distracted by Sam’s spread legs and absent fingers, misses the first three times Sam says his name and then fucking _blushes_ when he looks up quick to find Sam’s eyes on his mouth again. He almost drives them into a river when they both reach out to change the tape at the same time, Sam’s thumb brushing along the line of Dean’s pinkie finger.

“For – pull over,” Sam grits once Dean’s got the car under control, looking for a moment like he’s going to put a hand on Dean’s leg before thinking better of it and staring out of his window instead.

Dean pulls into an empty parking lot and stops where Sam nods him to, right at the back under some trees. He takes a breath and turns to look at Sam and then Sam’s mouth is on his, his tongue in Dean’s mouth and a hand on his cock, grinding down and swallowing all of Dean’s oxygen.

Dean groans when Sam pulls back to watch himself pop the buttons on Dean’s jeans. “Want to suck you, Sammy.” Sam hisses and clatters their mouths back together. He throws one of his legs over Dean’s knees and grabs with his free hand at Dean’s hair, pulls his head back over the seat. His fingers wrap around Dean through his boxers, jerking him hard with the cotton. Dean pushes up into it as best he can, biting Sam’s lip by accident when he feels his dick press into his thigh, and comes when Sam twists his wrist and squeezes on the upstroke.

“Sam,” Dean manages once he’s stopped shuddering. “Christ, Sam, warn a guy.”

“Seems like you enjoyed it,” Sam says. His hand hovers around Dean’s crotch before he pulls away enough to let Dean do the buttons back up, wrinkling his nose at the stickiness he guesses he’s just going to have to put up with.

He shoots a look at Sam, then down to the outline of his dick in his pants. “You uh, want help with that?”

He almost laughs at the intensity of effort it takes Sam to catch Dean’s grasping fingers before he can touch anything. “No.”

Sam’s holding on to Dean with the hand he just used to get him off, and everything gets a lot less funny when he gives Dean a considering look. “I’ll let you suck me off when we find a motel, though.”

It’s not quite pedal to the metal, but it’s a close thing.

  


As it turns out, when they arrive, Dean’s mouth doesn’t get anywhere near Sam’s dick. Instead they drive between six separate theatres, get turned down in each and have to tell some kid’s mom that no, they don’t do private parties, and spend an hour arguing about moving on before Dean gives up and lets Sam push him into the car.

When they walk into a motel a few towns over, Dean’s having real difficulty working out what he most wants to do to Sam. Fuck him or fucking well throttle him.

“Dean –”

“Sammy.”

“ _Dean_ ,” says Sam, “you’re being a child, come on.”

“Think you’ve got that a bit mixed up,” says Dean, and dumps his bag on the bed. He turns around so he can glare at Sam better. “We’re not amateur magicians and we don’t perform for six year olds, remember?”

“Seriously,” says Sam. “It’s not that big a deal. We can’t magic money out of thin air, how are we supposed to survive?”

“Told you,” Dean says. “An hour on our backs –”

“Wasn’t funny the first time you said it, so –”

“An hour on _my_ back, then, Sammy.”

Sam is suddenly a whole fucking lot closer. One hand gripping Dean’s arm just above the elbow, the other planted on the wall beside his head, stopping him from escaping.

“Do not,” says Sam, “joke.”

In some other universe, some lucky version of Dean is already on his knees.

He parts his lips. Sam lets go of his arm and turns away.

If Dean were a lesser man he’d probably throw a tantrum from the sheer fucking unfairness of it all. As if this part of proceedings wasn’t bad enough first time around, now Sam wants them to go through it all over again.

He grits his teeth. “All right then,” he says to the back of Sam’s head. “I guess we’re going to have to _learn_ to magic money out of thin air. Because I’m not working a kid’s birthday party and neither are you.” He thinks about reminding Sam out loud that there are better things they could be doing right now but Dean doesn’t think that’s going to help right now. He settles for adding, “I’m older, what I say goes.”

Sam does not sound amused. “We can’t eat your principles, Dean.”

Dean doesn’t remember suggesting they could, actually, but whatever. He gets under the covers fully dressed, staring rigidly at the ceiling while Sam takes his time changing. Just out of his line of sight, over there.

He’s still awake when Sam thrashes his way out of his sheets and into the bathroom in the middle of the night. He tries shutting his eyes and forcing himself to sleep while he can’t see Sam, rolls so he’s got his back to Sam’s bed and pulls the covers up to stop himself shivering.

The room soaks briefly yellow when Sam opens the bathroom door. Dean blinks at the paisley wallpaper and follows a line of unlikely ivy to the ceiling with his eyes.

The light snaps out, and Dean listens to Sam fumbling through the room. Instead of going back to his own bed, though, Dean’s mattress sinks as Sam climbs in with him and grabs a fistful of covers. He shuffles close enough to press his palm flat against the middle of Dean’s back, grumbling under his breath.

Dean pushes fractionally back into Sam’s hand and shuts his eyes.

  


In the morning, Dean wakes up to Sam standing over him, hair dripping all over. “I hate you,” he says, and wrestles his head back under the pillow. Sam yanks it away.

“ _Hate_ ,” says Dean.

Sam smiles at him. He’s got a hand on Dean’s arm, thumb smoothing over the sore spot he put there last night. Dean gives him a suspicious look. “What’s got you all chirpy?”

“I just talked to Ellen.”

“Did _she_ tell you to wake me up?”

“Nope,” says Sam. “I decided that all by myself.” He avoids Dean’s fist and continues, “But she did tell me she’s got a space for us for a couple weeks. If we want it.”

“Sorry for – ” says Dean after a moment. He makes a vague and all-encompassing gesture at Sam. “You know.”

“‘You know,’” mimics Sam, grinning.

  


Opening night back at Harvelle’s, three goddamn days since Dean got a hand on Sam but who’s counting, and Sam’s gone all jittery.

“Stop it,” Dean says without taking his eyes off the hearts he’s busy disappearing from cards. “You’re too big to flutter. What?”

Sam hesitates. Then he says, “I want you to wear the dress tonight.”

Dean flicks the last card into the air and catches it newly-blank in his other hand, fumbling the catch because that’s what happens when you don’t have any breath left in you. “Sure, Sam.”

Then, because things might be a little weird right now but it’s not like Dean stopped knowing his brother, he pockets the card instead of reattaching the hearts and asks, “You gonna help me with it?”

Sam doesn’t answer, but Dean’s watching their reflection in the window and he thinks it’s okay.

Ellen gives them the same dressing room as they had last time, the one situated directly underneath the stage. There’s a band playing, a girl with a chocolate voice singing about something Dean can’t hear. Maybe she’s wearing a red dress, too.

Sam’s got his nose to Roger’s cage, and it would serve him right if he got bitten, but because Dean’s an awesome brother he decides to take the situation in his own hands. “You want to dress him up instead of me?”

“You know you’d have to stick all my fingers back on for me if I tried.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Dean. He decides it’s safe enough to smirk. “And I’ve got a vested interest in your fingers, right, Sam?”

Sam snorts loud enough that he looks embarrassed, but at least he’s looking at Dean now. He reaches for his backpack and pulls the dress out, still all wrapped in paper.

An entire lifetime of motels and dressing rooms says there’s no reason for Dean to be shy about changing in front of Sam, but someone throws a dress into the mixing bowl and everything gets confused. Dean pulls his shirt over his head and tugs his jeans down, and doesn’t look anywhere but at the wall when he slips his arms through the straps and smoothes the dress down his body. It’s loose while it’s not zipped up, lots of spare material at the neck that Dean thinks is actually supposed to be there, and this still doesn’t feel normal but at least it’s not getting any weirder. He wonders how different it would feel if he let Sam shave his legs next time, dragging a wet razor across his skin followed straight after by his lips, all soft on Dean’s legs. Maybe Dean would try going out without his stockings, just to see.

He reaches behind him to draw the zipper up, then drops his hands. “Will you –?”

The room is empty and the door ajar, and Dean can hear Sam talking to someone on the other side of it. His voice is dark and low and Dean wants to pull him back into the room and let Sam tell him everything he’s going to do to him. Maybe even while he does it. Instead Dean sits down in front of the mirror and picks up the rouge.

The first band gets done at right about the time Dean does, and Sam’s still standing outside the door. And shirtless, Dean realises, spotting it on the floor. He pulls the door open, ready to bitch at Sam for the first thing he can think of that doesn’t rhyme with _fucking off to chat_ , and changes his mind very quickly when Sam looks over his bare shoulder and widens his eyes.

“Um –” he says, looking all the way down Dean’s body before hauling his gaze back up again, and only then steps away from the door. There’s a woman standing next to him, black hair trailing down her back and all her curves angled towards Sam. Her lips curve up as she looks at Dean, full and dark and definitely not coloured with a combination of Vaseline and cheap powder. He gives her a lazy smirk, willing himself not to run his hands down the satin slicking the way down his sides.

Sam puts his hand to the center of Dean’s back, and Dean realises he’s pulling the gaping dress together where the woman can’t see what he’s doing.

“You must be Dean,” she says after a minute, and smiles wider. Dean decides she’s the singer he heard when they walked in earlier; her voice is deep enough that it could almost belong to a man.

“In the flesh,” says Dean.

“Oh,” says Sam. “Olivia, this … is my brother.” He says it like it’s the first time he’s ever been allowed to, his hand pressing reverent against Dean’s skin. Dean’s head is starting to spin. He presses back.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dean,” Olivia says. “Your brother wouldn’t let me in, I thought I was going to have to break through him.”

“He should’ve kicked me out instead,” Dean tells her, because everyone lies. “Sorry about that.”

She waves an easy hand at him. Dean can’t tell if she’s laughing at them or genuinely enigmatic, and a couple of months ago he would have been trying a lot harder to find out, but Sam has let go of the dress and his hand is dropping further down Dean’s back. Olivia’s lips part.

“I’m sorry to rush you,” she says, and looks like she means to continue before Dean interrupts.

“Not a problem, we were going up on stage now anyway. Right, Sam?”

“Maybe after I’ve put a shirt on,” Sam says, awkwardly backing into the dressing room. Dean catches Olivia’s eye and she winks as she walks inside.

They head for the stage, ducking into a corner to wait for the second band to finish. Dean pokes his head through the curtain from the side of the stage because you never know, this could be the night they performed for more than just each other and the loneliest dregs of society, and some warning never hurt.

Sam comes up behind him as he pulls his head back in. “Big crowd?” he asks, setting his hand low on Dean’s back to keep the dress taut as he pulls the zipper up. Slowly.

“No. Big fucking surprise.”

“I am surprised,” Sam says into his hair, fingers lingering at the nape of his neck. “Look what they won’t get to see.”

“Just a dude in a dress, Sammy,” Dean tells him. He doesn’t think that’s what he really wanted to say but he isn’t sure what that is, either.

“No,” says Sam, and presses his lips to the very top of Dean’s spine.

There are at least three members of the band still fucking around on stage, but this corner is hidden and dark and Dean honestly doesn’t care. He shuts his eyes for the half a second that Sam’s mouth is on him, and when he pulls away, turns around and kisses him, right in the center of his mouth.

Sam doesn’t hesitate. He gets his hands on Dean and shoves him back against the wall, tongue in his mouth and hands keeping his hips from jerking, then pulls away almost immediately to grin at him.

“Sam,” Dean hisses, trying to press their mouths back together. “What, come on, they’ve got all their encores left to –”

“Are you wearing anything under here?”

Dean frowns. “Okay, we don’t have time for _that_ , but –”

Sam flickers a glance down to where Dean’s dick is starting to strain through the satin. “You want to go on stage looking like that?”

Dean means to bite the smirk off Sam’s face but somehow it turns into a kiss instead, groaning into his mouth because his body has become a six-foot nerve ending and Sam is wrapped around the whole of him. He takes his hands off Sam long enough to hike the dress up to his waist and has to wait for him to unbutton his pants and shove them down before he takes Dean’s dick in hand with his own. Dean gets it together just long enough to gesture at himself and pant, “Easy access, eh, Sammy?”

“Only until I buy you panties,” Sam mutters through his teeth, jerking them in quick, tight strokes, and Dean moans and drops his forehead to Sam’s shoulder. “Red lace, Dean. Guess that’ll make it more difficult for me to fuck you –”

“So don’t buy them,” Dean manages, bucking into Sam’s hand. “Thought you were the smart one –”

“Not going to let a little thing like women’s underwear stop me,” Sam says. Dean can’t see his face but he can hear the grim sincerity in his voice, so he turns his head and bites the curve of Sam’s neck, and comes into his hand.

Sam steps back when Dean opens his eyes, still fisting his own cock with his other hand on the back of Dean’s neck. Dean tugs him forward again, presses their mouths together and wraps his hand around Sam’s, jerking him the rest of the way there.

The band is still playing when Sam slips out of his waistcoat, wiping his hand and offering it to Dean to do the same before he drops it on the floor. He grins at Dean and Dean licks his lips, feeling his mouth all loose and pleased. “Think anyone noticed? Pretty fucking loud there, Sam.”

“Who?” he says sardonically, and without giving Dean room to reply adds, “not over them.” He jerks his head at the stage and means _who cares?_

The show is over too fast, and Dean is trailing offstage after Sam, staring at that stunningly visible bite on his neck. Dean wants to lick it, and Sam is walking too far ahead to let him. He considers stopping, walking Sam back into a wall and sucking the bite into a bruise until Sam decides he wants to take charge, fuck, fuck, Dean is tired of waiting.

He doesn’t wait for the dressing room door to close before saying Sam’s name to his back. Sam turns around. Slowly.

Dean takes a breath and a step towards him. “I,” he says, and then Sam is there, dragging him all the way into the room, sinking his fingers into Dean’s hair and pressing his mouth to Dean’s. It’s crushing, painful, barely even a kiss, and the only thing keeping Dean on his feet is Sam standing right _there_. He gets out a, “Fuck, fuck –” against Sam’s lips, forgetting to recognise his own voice, his whole body stuttering against Sam’s.

One of Sam’s hands slips out of Dean’s hair and all down his neck, a flat pressure on his spine bowing him into Sam’s body. Dean fights him to arch closer, wanting to push in but restrained by the hand in his hair. “Sam –”

“Quiet,” Sam growls. He drops his hand to the nape of Dean’s neck, cradling the back of his head in his palm while the other hand pushes lower. He cups Dean’s ass, yanking him closer until their hips are flush, moves his hand to the small of Dean’s back and pushes his fingertips in. His mouth is trailing down Dean’s neck, all the skin that’s suddenly available to him now that Dean is craning it back.

Dean can feel a moan trying to escape in time with the sucking, smacking noise of Sam’s careless mouth. He’s doing his best to rut against Sam’s thigh, and he _gasps_ when Sam nips sharp at the curve of his neck and then shoves Dean away.

“Take it off,” he orders, three whole feet away from Dean. “Now.”

Dean reaches back to the zipper with shaking fingers. He keeps his eyes on Sam’s face, on his wet, wet mouth, because he knows how to respond to what he can see there. He lets his own mouth hang open and his hips jut out, dick poking obscene through the dress, and tries to focus on pulling the zipper down.

“Shit,” mutters Sam. Dean takes a dazed moment to realise that that’s not a good reaction, and then Sam tugs him forward and away from the door with his hands on Dean’s arms.

“What –?” Dean starts, stumbling over his feet. The light changes as the door swings all the way open.

“You forgot your rabbit,” comes the unchangingly disinterested voice of the principle stagehand through the gap. Dean shoots Sam a look. He tries to look purposeful instead of uncomfortably turned on as he walks to the coat stand in the far corner of the room. His dick is leaking slick through the dress, and Dean tries surreptitiously to pull the material away, doesn’t want to stain it. He grits his teeth while the stagehand keeps talking. Something about cleaning, or fixing, or –frankly Dean doesn’t give a rat’s ass, but whatever it is it means stopping and leaving.

He turns around when Sam thanks the stagehand and shuts the door behind him. “Jesus Christ,” Sam sighs. He meets Dean’s eye then looks down at Roger in the cage.

“Yeah,” says Dean.

  


He’s waking up every night now, and that’s different from last time. Last time they skipped in no time at all from a mortifying conversation about nightmares to Dean’s sweet baby brother nudging his dick into his mouth and telling him to suck. It’s amazing what that will do for insomnia; Dean would recommend it to anyone with a brother and an absentee father and a nomadic lifestyle, maybe an additional liking for incest. Maybe twin brothers, so when the first one fucks off to Stanford three weeks later, you get over it double-quick.

This time, Sam isn’t so sweet anymore, even if he is still Dean’s baby brother, and for some reason unknown to Dean he’s all the way over on the other side of the room instead of following up on earlier and fucking Dean through the mattress (either mattress, or the wall, or the floorboards, Dean’s really not picky). And Dean’s too afraid to look away from him. Again.

He gets out of his own bed and leaves the covers behind, because Sam sprawls like he was born to and especially when he’s sharing with Dean.

“Dean?” Sam mumbles as Dean climbs in.

“Shut up,” Dean replies tiredly. He fits himself face-down under whichever of Sam’s limbs are most accessible and shuts his eyes, pushes in closer. Dean has zero pride at this time of night (morning), and he doesn’t give a crap anyway.

Sam is rubbing warm, careful circles into Dean’s back, just hard enough to convince Dean’s fucked-up subconscious that he’s made of the same stuff as Dean, because he loves Dean like the world is ending and sometimes Dean remembers that reality isn’t a barrier to that.

Sometimes.

“Sammy,” Dean whispers. He presses an open-mouthed kiss to Sam’s chest. “What do you want me to do, Sammy.”

“Go to sleep,” Sam whispers back. His hand doesn’t stop moving.

Dean says, “No.”

There’s a beat in the dark, and then Dean is on his back with the covers ripped away, boxers gone, Sam kneeling between his legs with one hand on his chest to keep him down and the other pushing his legs apart further. “Spread,” he says. “More. Dean, spread your fucking legs so I can fuck you like I want to fuck you or you’ll be sorry you asked.”

Dean whines and brings his knees up all the way, pulling them as far apart as he can stand while keeping his feet planted. Sam keeps one hand on Dean’s knee, holding him down while he yanks his sweats away with the other hand. He swears through his teeth, struggling to keep his balance as he tries to get them off one-handed, cock bobbing against Dean’s thigh. Dean can’t help himself; he takes a hand off his leg and reaches out for it.

Sam knocks his hand away the second Dean gets his fingers around him. “Did I say you could touch?”

He’s waiting for an answer, both hands on top of Dean’s on his knees. “No,” says Dean. “Please, Sam, I want to.”

Sam slides back, and Dean makes a noise in his throat when he gets off the bed completely. Sam ignores him, kicking his sweats off completely and turning around to rummage through his bag. Dean can’t see what he’s doing so instead he’s got to listen, holding his breath to hear the drag of the zip, what sounds like all Sam’s books knocking together, a water bottle. He shuts his eyes and tries to concentrate on breathing, because weeks and months and years of foreplay will do that to you when you finally get there.

He opens his eyes when he feels Sam press a kiss to his lips, confused because it’s coming from a strange angle, and finds Sam kneeling on the floor beside him. He takes his hand away and presses the tips of his fingers to Sam’s mouth, sighing when Sam opens his lips to suck.

Sam pulls away a moment later and gets to his feet, leaning in to whisper, “Hands to yourself,” against Dean’s lips. He fits himself back between Dean’s legs and drops something beside his foot, then leans in to press a kiss to the inside of Dean’s thigh, right at the top beside his knee, tongue slipping out to wet his skin. His palm is back on Dean’s chest, lower than before, and he kisses his way down his leg while Dean tries to keep still. “So hot, Dean,” Sam says against him. “Fuck, you’re so hot.” He bites down, nothing to it, but Dean’s breath jolts in his chest anyway. Sam switches to the other side. “Next time you’re going to wear the dress. Gonna have to be careful we don’t rip it,” he sucks one, two, three hickeys into Dean’s skin and presses a finger against each, “or everyone’s going to look at you and see.”

“See what?” Dean pants. The whole world is gone; all that’s left is Sam and his mouth on Dean’s skin and his voice in his head and his hand holding Dean down everywhere at once. Some illusion.

“See your little brother,” Sam says, and drags his hand down, palm against the line of coarse hair on Dean’s stomach, “all over you,” he bites again, “making you beg like a whore.”

“Shit,” Dean gasps as Sam’s hand reaches his cock, fingers circling the base loosely then letting go. “Sam – please –”

“Sam, please, what?”

Dean does his best to get himself together enough to say, “Your hand, fuck. Put your fucking hand back on my cock. _Please_ , Sam, I want. Now, do it, I want you to. Use your hand on me, come on, Sam –”

Sam wraps his fingers around Dean’s balls, fondling them with one hand while the other grips the top of his thigh. Dean arches up. “Not my mouth?”

“Christ,” Dean groans.

Sam smirks, Dean doesn’t have to see it to know that is Sam fucking _smirking_ against his leg. “Nah,” he says, and when Dean opens his mouth to protest, takes his hand off his balls and kneels up to reach and slip his fingers inside. Dean licks all around, straining his neck, shifting his legs on the bed so his feet come together on the other side of Sam’s body.

Sam has taken his other hand off Dean and is instead jerking himself slowly, occasionally bumping the head against Dean’s leg so he can feel the wetness. Dean moans.

Sam drags his fingers out of Dean’s mouth, lines of spit dripping down Dean’s chin. “God,” he says. Dean thinks it’s by accident. “Dean. God. I’m going to fuck you.”

“Figured,” Dean tells him. Sam leans down to kiss him again, one fleeting brush of his lips before he sits back on his heels. He grips his cock with his wet hand, smearing precome all over his fingers, eyes dark and intent.

Last time they did this, Sam could never quite get past the surprise of it. All wide eyes and goofy smiles until Dean coaxed him out of it with a hand on his cock.

Doesn’t look like that’s going to be a problem this time. Dean’s mouth falls open when he feels Sam’s finger pressing into him, his legs sliding down the bed before he grabs them back. Sam doesn’t seem to care. “Fucking _fuck_.”

“You have no idea what you look like,” Sam tells him quietly. He’s got his left hand on his cock, jacking in time with shallow thrusts of his finger. Backhanded, Dean had forgotten Sam liked that sometimes. He stares at Sam with his mouth hanging open, feeling a little grunted breath jolt out of him with every thrust.

Sam takes his hand off his cock and puts two fingers on Dean’s mouth, pressing warm and sticky against his lips. “I’m gonna fuck this later,” he says. “Like you wanted.”

“Yeah,” says Dean. He just cuts off a _thank you_.

Sam continues as if he hadn’t said anything. “Demanding little thing, aren’t you?” His voice is going breathless, and he curls the finger still inside Dean, then adds another one. He fucks them into Dean’s body, just this side of too hard. “Hold me, Sammy, I can’t sleep. Help me put my dress on. Let me suck your dick, Sammy.” Sam leans down, moving his hand from Dean’s mouth to the pillow to support his weight, and lets both fingers slip out. “Fuck me stupid, Sammy,” he murmurs, straight into Dean’s ear.

Dean’s good and familiar with Sam’s dick, and he’s really not ready for it to go up his ass, but Sam grabs for the lube that’s found its way to the floor. He starts drizzling it over his fingers, up and down his cock, taking his sweet time about it. Dean whines and shifts on the bed.

Sam gives him a look. “You can touch yourself,” he says. “If you want.”

Dean has a hand on his dick and two fingers in his ass before Sam can finish the sentence. He gives himself a point – a hundred points – for not coming on the spot. He cants up, thumb at the leaky slit, then slides his fist down to grip hard at the base. “Wanna touch you, Sam.”

Sam takes Dean’s hand off his dick and puts it on his own. Dean squeezes gently, lube and precome squelching under his fingers.

The next time Sam puts his fingers inside, it’s slicker, a little cooler, and Dean’s eyes roll back when Sam presses into his prostate. He can hear a long, scraping moan in his throat, and if Sam tells him to be quiet then they’re going to have a problem.

He cuts himself off to get out, “Sam –”

“Okay,” says Sam, and pulls his fingers out. Dean squirms, bereft, and Sam drops to hands and knees over Dean’s body, bracing himself on either side of Dean’s head. He pushes his dick right up against his hole, pressing lightly so that Dean can just, just feel the give. “I’m going to come right up in you,” Sam tells him, and that’s when he starts pushing in, one fucking inch at a time. “You know that?”

“I know,” Dean manages, holding himself open. “No condom. Bad Sam.”

Sam grunts. He stops moving and gets one of his hands on Dean’s swollen cock, gives him a warning tug. “Want me to stop?”

Dean whimpers. “No,” he says, trying to buck, “Sam, move. Sam, please, I’ll be good –”

“Christ,” Sam says, then, “well, good.”

He continues pushing in. Slow and very, very fucking sure.

Dean clutches at the sheets, at the headboard, finally decides that Sam will tell him if he doesn’t want Dean’s hands on him, and claws at his back as Sam gets all the way in. Sam is mumbling Dean’s name like anything else would hurt to say, and they both moan aloud when he pulls back. He waits for a fraction of a second that Dean could frankly do without before he shoves back in. And then again, and again until he’s slamming Dean into the bed, his hand moving on Dean’s cock in a jagged counter-rhythm.

Dean can hear himself babbling a litany of filth but he doesn’t care; it does feel that good and Sam’s cock is that big, and then Sam pauses and twists his hips and Dean gives up talking at all. He hooks his legs around Sam’s body and turns his head to muffle his noises in the pillow and chokes when Sam pulls it out from under him.

“Come on,” Sam is muttering, the snap of his hips increasingly erratic. “Dean. Dean, I’m right here, are you feeling this? Right here, come on, pay attention, Dean, god –”

“Sammy,” Dean grits through his teeth. He pulls Sam’s head down into the crook of his neck, fingers wrapped tight in his hair, and that’s when Sam tightens his fist on Dean’s cock and Dean comes. He spurts everywhere, swearing into Sam’s hair and feeling wetness spatter up his own chest, shuddering into the feel of it on Sam’s, his whole body shaking out of itself.

Sam follows like he’s been waiting for it. Dean does his best to squeeze his legs tighter around him, hauling him in closer as he comes, fucking into Dean until he can’t take it anymore.

Sam’s heart is still pounding when he leans up to kiss Dean; Dean can feel it. “As promised,” he says, lips curving against Dean’s mouth.

Dean leaves his fingers in Sam’s hair as he pulls out of Dean, his come dripping after in a warm, gloopy mess. “Real fuckin’ good of you to deliver,” he says. He’s sweaty and out of breath, and his ass is sticky. He wrinkles his nose.

“I’m real fuckin’ good,” Sam replies in his best drawl. Dean snorts. Sam slicks a finger through the mess, letting the tip press back into Dean, then he clambers over Dean’s body and off the bed.

He comes back out of the bathroom with a wet towel, leaving the door open for the light. Dean lets him clean him up with his warm hands and easy kisses, and has absolutely no complaints when Sam drops the towel and pulls him off the bed so they can go back to sleep in Dean’s instead. Emphasis on sleep.

Probably.

  


The day of their last show at Harvelle’s, Dean still can’t do up his bow tie. “That’s what you’re here for,” he tells Sam, head tilted back.

Sam smirks. “Dressing you?”

“Only when you’re not undressing me.”

Sam pauses. “All right, then,” he says, and undoes the tie all over again.

They’ve done two horror shows and a night in the Wild West already this week, because if convincing a roomful of people that you’ve turned a rabbit into a pair of horses isn’t fucking awesome Dean doesn’t know what is.

Tonight, Sam’s playing the sceptic to Dean’s magician. He looks good in a lab coat, it suits him. Very … white.

“Thank you,” says Sam. He toasts first Dean and then the audience with one of the conical flasks he’s holding and takes a sip of the green chemical smoking its way up the inside. “That’s a nice bow tie.”

“I know,” says Dean. “I picked it myself.” He gives the ends a tug and says in an aside to the audience, “I have excellent taste.”

Sam clears his throat. “I’ll be the judge of that. _You_ believe in magic.”

“Of course I do,” says Dean, and summons up a mirror halfway across the stage to prove it, hiding Sam from view. He checks that his hair’s looking all right, then gives his reflection a smirk. Then a wink, for good measure.

The Dean in the mirror leers back.

“Magic isn’t real, dude,” says Sam.

Dean gives the crowd a _what can you do?_ look and vanishes the mirror again. Sam is staring at him, and Dean doesn’t think anyone else can see the way his lips are twitching, the bright of his eyes.

He smiles at Sam, letting it fall out of his mouth like a kiss.

“Only if you say so, Sammy,” he replies.

  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Everything With Wings Is Restless | written by oddishly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9258455) by [lavishsqualor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavishsqualor/pseuds/lavishsqualor)




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